1855, I. 356).
In the scheme for the revision of the Prayer-Book in William III.'s
reign it was actually arranged to expunge _Benedicite_, and to
substitute Ps. cxlviii. It would have been extruded in good company
however, as _Magnificat_ and _Nunc Dimittis_ were to be replaced by
psalms in a similar way. Happily the deplorable proposals of 1689 came
to nothing. But strange to say, previously to this, in the Laudian
Scottish Prayer-Book, Psalm xxiii. had been substituted for
_Benedicite_. In England, however, in 1662, the Church, taught by the
persecution of the Commonwealth, declined "to appoint some psalm or
scripture hymn instead of the apocryphal _Benedicite"_, as demanded by
the Puritans at the Savoy Conference (Procter, _P.B._, 1872, p. 119).
At a rather earlier period, Dean Boys of Canterbury, in his quaint
_Prayer-Book Notes_ (1615?) says: "I finde this hymne less martyred than
the rest, and therefore dismisse it, as Christ did the woman (John
viii.), 'Where be thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee? No more
doe I; goe thy way.
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